Little Liana was relieved when she saw the huge monster. She loved this dream, because this world was a place of fun. It was always nice and warm here, and instead of quarrelling adults and mean brothers there were only large tropical-looking plants here, and a herd of huge grey animals trudging quietly through a semi-open forest. The beasts might look strange and scary, a little prehistoric even, but she'd soon discovered that they were actually quite friendly. From the first time she'd had this dream, they'd immediately accepted her, and she could walk through the herd like a friend, even though she was a tiny human and her friends were behemoths, slightly bigger than an elephant with two weird protrusions on their noses. This allowed them to dig into the ground looking for tubers and roots, and probably fight too, but she hadn't seen that yet. They were always friendly.
Once, in the waking world, she'd been looking through an old book with prehistoric beasts in it, and to her surprise she'd seen a drawing of an animal that resembled her friends a bit. Only the colours were wrong, and the legs were a little different, and their ears had a completely different shape. It was clear that the artist had never actually seen them. Still, little Liana found them recognizable enough to see that he meant to draw her friends. Her father had looked three times before he could finally pronounce the name and then declared that they were Brontotheriums, even though he couldn't quite follow his daughter's interest in extinct Tertiary mammals.
She'd had to practice long for their name, but eventually she'd learned the word, and christened the beast that always came to her "Bronto." It was a huge male with enormous horn-like things on his nose that were the size of Liana herself, but this behemoth was also very kind and gentle. He even let little Liana sit on her back sometimes. This dream had had no boundaries, which she loved. Friendship sometimes knows no species boundaries, and even the boundaries between the worlds and between dream and waking reality were also very relative to the child.
The dreams she had in this world were rare, but they were much more real than most of her other dreams. They almost looked like they were real, though Liana was big enough to know she couldn't. She had even noticed that she felt real pain when she cut herself on blades of grass or pricked herself on the leaf tips of the strange palm-like plants of the undergrowth of the forest. That was something that normally didn't happen in dreams, she knew that too, but she had accepted it as part of this dream world, which she liked to return to because she had never met unfriendly people like in the 'real' world, who sometimes that made life miserable.
But today was different. There was a strange atmosphere in the large clearing next to the magnolia forest, where Liana now stood all alone. She had lost Bronto's herd, which had happened before, but normally she would find them quickly by noticing the sounds of huge hooves, and the characteristic roar of the brontotheriums that sounded like a thumping 'wowl' and thundered through the forest from a great distance. But now the forest was quiet, dead quiet, save for the sounds of little birds and a kind of cricket. High in the trees a sort of squirrel jumped nervously away with an acorn between its teeth, but nothing else moved.
She walked away from the clearing through the huge trees. Some of them were huge magnolias, while others looked more like pines, but there were also some oak trees and giant cycads. But none of the trees here were really the same as the ones she knew in the real world, and these were always more beautiful to her. Between the trunks were huge ferns, which were sometimes especially sought out by the huge animals because they apparently liked their taste. Especially the little ones of the herd went to great lengths to get hold of as many fronds as possible. Liana didn't like them, they were very chewy and unfit for human consumption, but there were also some kind of tiny strawberries growing here that she liked a lot, so she didn't mind. Those wild strawberries was what she was after now, and there were plenty of them here. If she didn't find Bronto, she could spend her time instead looking for the ripest and tastiest strawberries in the shade of a huge cycad here.
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Suddenly she stopped picking berries, startled by a frightening premonition. She had been so busy looking for strawberries that she hadn't realised what was in the air, but now she suddenly noticed the ominous silence. All the birds were silent now, except for a screeching crow, and his raspy voice seemed to warn her somehow. Something wasn't right! She called out Bronto's name again, but she still got no answer.
She looked around. Everything was still quiet, but she sensed that something was watching her. Something that most likely didn't really have good intentions. And after all she was just a child in a vast prehistoric jungle. The huge crow she'd heard before flew away screeching, and little Liana froze for a split second, because she finally saw it: A dangerous-looking predator, resembling a huge hyena, was approaching her. The beast had huge yellow teeth that stuck out of its mouth, and had light brown colour with some light spots on its legs that had kept it camouflaged in the shadow of the trees. It was creeping toward her, and she knew what his intentions were. She had no way of defending herself, nor was there any nearby tree to climb, so she ran and ran as fast as she could.
The predator didn't respond for a second or so, and then suddenly moved. She ran in panic, toward a group of magnolia trees that grew a little further, but the animal was clearly faster than her. A herd of tiny deer-like animals sprang up from the grass where they had been hiding, but the predator was not distracted by them, and continued to focus on the prey that he had selected. Little Liana screamed in panic now and screeched in terror, flailing with her arms as the distance from the monster grew closer and closer. More animals and birds that had been hidden in the undergrowth now raced away in all directions.
The beast nearly got her when suddenly a booming sound came from the bushes, causing the predator to hesitate. With a heavy "wowl, wauwl," Bronto came out of the bushes, shovelling the predator off the ground with the prongs of its nose, then tossing it farther back in one fluid motion. The huge behemoth then had little Liana climb onto its back, while the predator fled limping. Bronto took a trot and when they were through the woods she saw the rest of the herd back, grazing a lot further and rooting up tubers on the other side of a savanna-like plain. She was saved!
She played with the huge animals for the rest of the evening. She ate fruit and drank from a stream, and had so much more fun than in the 'real world', she thought. There were no angry grown-ups and children here who wouldn't play with her. There were no people here who would rather spend time with phones and computers than paying attention to children. Only huge friendly animals that played with her and defended her when needed. Finally, satisfied, she went to sleep under a huge ginkgo tree when the day was over. A few hours later, she was woken by her mother in her own bed.
"Come Liana, school time."
Her dreams about Bronto came back regularly, but became less frequent with ageing. By her teens she had almost forgotten about her big dream friend, although at regular intervals she still had other dreams and daydreams that were much more intense and possibly a lot weirder too than most people's would ever be.